Point Blank (1967)

Director: John Boorman

Writers: Alexander Jacobs; David Newhouse; Rafe Newhouse

Based on The Hunter by Richard Stark

Actors: Lee Marvin; Angie Dickinson; John Vernon; Keenan Wynn; Carrol O’Connor

Cinematography: Philip H. Lathrop

Music: Johnny Mandel

Running Time: 92 mins.

Neo-noir begins in L.A.

        Something happened in 1967 that changed the way we view movies and altered our idea of what film was capable of. It was a turning point year in Hollywood that brought in a cinematic golden age of innovation unequaled since the 1930s. A new generation of filmmakers appeared on the scene who were free agents, independent of the old studio system, and free to turn their individualistic style of storytelling into reality. Directors like Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde), Mike Nichols (The Graduate), and John Boorman (Point Blank) pushed the envelope that year, breaking new ground and creating examples that filmmakers have followed ever since.

           John Boorman’s Point Blank is a neo-noir--- a film noir produced after the classic period (1940 to1960), but maintaining the basic elements of the classics (e.g Double Indemnity 1944): psychological crime story, involving a fated protagonist, and told in a distinct expressionistic style that underlined the dark theme of the material. It is, in fact, the first neo-noir (in my opinion), for it set the pattern and look for most of the neo-noirs that were to follow.

             Point Blank is an offbeat story of revenge set in both San Francisco and Los Angeles (mostly in L.A.). It’s violent, unpredictable, and revolutionary. Walker (no first name), the principal character, played by Lee Marvin, is shot and apparently killed in the first ten minutes of the film after a robbery scam on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. But he then turns up again a year later bent on obtaining the $93,000 owed him, and determined to wreak revenge on Mal Reese (John Vernon), the man who shot him, cheated him out of his cut, and ran off with his wife.

              The scene soon shifts to Los Angeles where Walker tracks down his wayward wife Lynn (Sharon Acker), and eventually Reese through the help of his wife’s sister Chris (Angie Dickinson). What follows is one frantic pursuit across L.A. from Santa Monica Beach to the L.A. River channel just south of downtown. This mad pursuit results in the suicide of his wife, Reese’s accidental death from a fall off his penthouse balcony, and the death of two of the syndicate heads who set up the original Alcatraz job. But oddly none of these deaths is caused by Walker directly. The movie ends where it begins on Alcatraz with Walker disappearing into the shadows of the deserted prison, never collecting his $93,000 cut.

              As in Kiss Me Deadly (1955) twelve years earlier, there’s an air of unreality in this movie that causes viewers to doubt what they’re seeing and hearing. Is it all a dream, is Walker a ghost, or is the entire film the fantasy of a dying man? Boorman leaves it up to the audience to decide.

              Like the Italian Antonioni, Boorman, an Englishman, was not fond of L.A. For him it signaled everything that was wrong with modern American society--- it was stark, over-sized, impersonal, alienating, and materialistic--- a perfect place for a vengeance- determined lone gun to operate freely. To emphasize this he chose location sites like the  empty antiseptic corridor of the L.A. Airport terminal for Walker’s arrival, the L.A. River channel between the Fourth and Sixth Street Bridges--- a huge ditch encased in concrete and lined with chain-link fences--- for a double assassination scene; the exterior of a sterile-looking glass and steel Wilshire Boulevard office building for Walker to prowl around in while doing his stalking; a super-sized Culver City car lot to highlight the materialistic superficiality of 1960’s America; and the grimy and deserted underbelly of the Santa Monica Freeway for a hair-raising white-knuckle demolition car ride. Even the more attractive locations like the Hollywood Hills home of Brewster (Carroll O’Connor), one of the syndicate heads, and the Huntley House Hotel in Santa Monica with its then futuristic outdoor elevator (still there, by the way) give the feeling of artificiality and vulgar wealth.

                What Boorman did with this movie to set the style for future neo-noirs is what makes Point Blank exceptional (other than Lee Marvin’s stunning performance). In the classic black and white noir movies of the past shades of lighting and use of shadows were used to set the mood of the story. This was no longer effective, or needed, in color movies. Boorman used color schemes to send the same messages. Different colors are highlighted in several key scenes: green in the syndicate office, orange at the Hollywood Hills house, white and blue in the car lot, and bright yellows and reds for Angie Dickinson’s dresses. It is definitely a beautiful movie to look at.

                In the classic noirs odd camera angles and distorted images were used to disorient the audience and create a feeling of unreality. Boorman uses a postmodern narrative style that jumps back and forth from past to present and seemingly out of place scenes like a bizarre nightclub episode with a screaming James Brown-like singer, a guileless clientele, and a semi-psychedelic fight scene for the same effect. These innovative techniques would become standard in the neo-noirs of Soderbergh, Mann, Lynch, and the others who have come since.

                  Point Blank was another film that was not well received by audiences in 1967, but has since become a cult classic, considered one of the “top films of the decade.” It has a 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

              

Blade Runner (1982)

Director: Ridley Scott

Writers: Hampton Francher & David Peoples, based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick.

Actors: Harrison Ford; Rutger Hauer; Sean Young; Edward James Olmos; Daryl Hannah; William Sanderson

Cinematography: Jordan Cronenweth

Music: Vangelis

Running time: 114 mins.

Rated: R

 Los Angeles, November 2019?

         Blade Runner is one of those movies that seems to be on most people’s most favorite list (91% on Rotten Tomatoes). When it was released in1982 it didn’t get a very positive response. The critics were cold to it, and the public couldn’t understand it. Why then is it now a classic? What is the appeal of this movie that has endured and grown over the last thirty-two years? 

          It’s a tech-noir, or future noir, or science-fiction noir--- the sub-genre  has several names. It wasn’t the first--- that honor goes to Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965), but it was the best. It had the great fortune of having Ridley Scott (a “creator of worlds”) as its director and artistic conceiver, and what makes it appealing first of all is the look. There was never anything before that actually looked anything like Blade Runner.

           Most science-fiction movies that dealt with future time presented a world that was totally modern and far advanced from the present. But Blade Runner did something different: it gave us a retro-future --- a future that was both technologically advanced, but also one that harked back to a familiar past. The idea that the future could possibly look like the past was until then completely unknown--- at least in Hollywood.

            The movie also dealt with the theme of what constitutes humanity, memory, and just how artificial is artificial intelligence. The humanity of the characters, both human and replicant, stands out and causes viewers to think a little more deeply than they normally would watching a sci-fi movie.

            The Los Angeles that Scott presents to us is a dark misty mega-city of gas fires, pollution, and acid rain--- a city of the left behinds--- those who could not qualify or afford to settle in the off-world colonies. Like the classic films noir it borrows from, most of the movie takes place at night. This L.A. is a city where the police patrol in air sleds(aerodyne “spinners”) and almost everyone else travels on foot, by bus or on bicycle. In its blighted crowdedness it resembles 1980s Shanghai more than 2010s Los Angeles, but that’s what makes this conception so noteworthy. It’s a possible L.A. as seen from 1982.

              Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), the main character, is a blade runner, a cop who hunts down replicants, advanced androids who possess self-awareness and can pass as totally human. These replicants were developed to serve as labor in the off-world colonies and are banned from earth. When several of them make a murderous escape from the colonies and wind up somewhere in the crowded streets of L.A., Deckard is called on to retire (i.e kill) them. And this he does. We follow Deckard in his pursuits through these streets that lead to a final end for the replicants, and an awakening and self-realization for Deckard. The unexpected awakening comes to him during his investigation when he encounters and falls in love with Rachael (Sean Young), an advanced Nexus-6 replicant, who was created especially for Dr EldonTyrell (Joe Turkell), the head of Tyrell Corporation, the developer and maker of the androids. Rachael, who is unaware that she is a replicant until she hears Deckard and Tyrell talking, saves Deckard’s life when he’s attacked by one of the escapees. After this the two come to question the actual meaning of life, and what makes us human. Is it intelligence or love--- or both? The answer is left to the viewer.

             Although most of Blade Runner was shot on sound stages at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank and in London, Scott used three iconic Los Angeles locations as exterior footage: Union Station, the Second Street tunnel, and especially the Bradbury Building on Broadway, which was used as the scene of the tense rooftop pursuit and finale of the film. The original novel by Phillip K. Dick takes place in San Francisco, but Scott set his version in Los Angeles because of its classic film noir associations. It was a good choice.

             The vision of Los Angeles in the second decade of the 21st century that Scott created may not be what has actually come about, but he was definitely prophetic about the multi-cultural makeup of the present-day city. Los Angeles in1980 was still a mostly white middle-American city, but In the last thirty years it has absorbed immigrants from every corner of the world, making it one of the most ethnically and racially diverse cities in the world. The multi-lingual conversations heard presently on the streets of downtown L.A., Hollywood, Westwood, or Van Nuys on any given day emphasize this change and recall the multi-lingual “Cityspeak” of Gaff (Edward James Olmos), Deckard’s cop associate, and the street people of Rick Deckard’s City of the Angels.